Trainspotting sequel cost more than £12.5million

THE long-awaited sequel to Trainspotting cost more than £12.5 million to make, film bosses have revealed.

Accounts for the company set up to produce T2 Trainspotting show that it had a total budget of £12,572,083.

The film, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle and directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle, was financed by backers including Sony’s TriStar Pictures and European Film Bonds. It also received a £500,000 grant from Scottish government arts body Creative Scotland.

The accounts of TS2 Productions Limited also reveal the amounts paid to the film makers for their roles on the movie, which was shot on various locations throughout Scotland in the summer.

Boyle was paid £520,000 for his services as a director and producer while Scots screenwriter John Hodge was paid a total of £380,000.

Producers Andrew MacDonald and Christian Colson also received payments of £260,000 each. No details of payments made to actors were disclosed.

The spend on T2 is a far cry from the first film which was shot in 1995 over seven weeks on a budget of £1.5 million with the cast and crew working out of an abandoned cigarette factory in Glasgow. It went on to make £48 million at the box office.

However, the budget is still relatively modest for such a high profile film. Boyle has said he did not want the cost of the film to get too high to stop studio interference.

The accounts also state that the film makers will be able to obtain a cash rebate of more than £2.4 million in UK film tax relief as the budget is below £20 million.

Last week the first full trailer for the film, loosely based on author Irvine Welsh’s novel Porno, was released.

The two-minute clip of the follow up to the 1996 film opens with Mark Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, walking into a rundown bar to meet Jonny Lee Miller’s character Sick Boy who says: “Hello Mark, so what have you been up to for 20 years.”

McGregor is then heard reciting an updated version of his famous ‘Choose Life’ speech from the original as scenes from the new movie are played in which he visits Spud, played by Ewen Bremner, and Kelly Macdonald’s character Diane.

The footage also shows Robert Carlyle’s psychotic character Begbie returning to a bar run by Sick Boy after being released from prison.

Trainspotting 2 will be released in cinemas on January 27, 2017 and in the US a week later.

The cast spent more than two months filming in various locations around Scotland, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bellshill in Lanarkshire and Blackburn in West Lothian.

McGregor, 45, revealed he originally feared he wasn’t Scottish enough to play Renton again having lived out of the country for so many years.

He said: “I left Scotland when I was 17. I was thinking ‘what if I can’t find him, what if I can’t find Renton?’